Meet THINK: The Team Behind #ImNotABox

THINK

What is THINK?

Our small team of three came together after winning a two-week internal competition in 2014 that challenged employees to think on big brand strategies and initiatives. After being humbled by the unique experience, we were given the opportunity to pursue this thinking full time. So after much deliberation, we took a leap of faith and left our previous roles from across the company to redefine brand development for Zappos, which led to the formation of THINK.

THINK is an in-house experiential campaign team focused on creating emotional, story worthy movements that contribute to the longevity of the Zappos brand. Our current focus is spreading the #ImNotABox philosophy: inspiring people to see not just the Zappos box, but also themselves and the world with a new perspective.

We want to invite our current customers, prospective customers and other brands to be a part of the story that we tell through these movements. We hope that our efforts show who we are, what we care about and why we are doing what we do. At the end of the day, we want to remind the world that we have two priorities at Zappos outside of our heart for retail: service and our customers.

Why THINK?

THINK is an acronym that we developed to test our ideas against when setting goals for the future. Is it timeless, hazardous, inspirational, new, and kinetic? In the end, we hope that Zappos can lead by example as a brand with a story that never stops unfolding.

#ImNotABox

The Zappos box is our way of being there for our customers wherever they are in life — whether they’re shopping for their baby's first shoes, their first marathon sneakers or their first date outfit. As an online retailer, our box is one of the most important and only guaranteed touch points that we have with each of our customers.

So we asked ourselves, how could we turn our box into a creative and meaningful experience to engage with our customers?

The #ImNotABox campaign was developed and created as an avenue for us to inspire our customers to see not just the Zappos box, but also themselves and the world with a new perspective.

We wanted to communicate this message across multiple mediums to cut through the noisy, overly saturated marketing world by storytelling for the Zappos brand in a new way.

The Results

Taking this risk with a non-retail focused campaign, we were unsure how this would resonate with our customers. To our surprise, we were humbled to see the positive buzz surrounding the launch, yielding 131 million impressions in the first week alone. The online video reached more than 113,000 views in a short month, earning 130 likes (compared to our channel's average view count of 2,000). The video also climbed to #7 on Ace Metrix's chart of Top Breakthrough Ads of Q2 2016, ranking as one of the top heartwarming ads overall for 2016.

Adding to the video’s success was the box redesign. We were excited to see that this part of the campaign disrupted the packaging industry in an online, consumer-driven world filled with boxes. Over 40 articles have been written by a number of accredited publications since the launch. And the campaign has collectively earned five awards in the marketing and packaging industry. Positive engagement and feedback continue to build as we measure and gauge the campaign's overall success, but so far we are humbled and excited to share these results with our followers. Thank you to everyone for your support along the way!

Here's a list of the awards and recognition that came out of the campaign: